


2.87 Billion

by doctorsdaughter



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: After Doomsday, Other, counting the children, major angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:24:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3169727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorsdaughter/pseuds/doctorsdaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On your darkest night, you will count the children on Gallifrey that day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	2.87 Billion

**Author's Note:**

> So basically I've had this idea in my head since the 50th Anniversary so...yay procrastination? Sorry if it's already been done!

_One dark night, you’ll count them._

The bride had been a nice distraction, and certainly the opposite of Rose. For a day, he let himself forget everything that had happened at Torchwood, and help this strange anomaly. But like all adventures, it had to end, and even though what he needed was the woman who was nothing like the woman he had lost, he couldn’t force Donna to come with him.

For the first time since the end of the Time War, he was alone in the console room, watching the TARDIS steer itself through space and time aimlessly. He closed his eyes as he sat on one of the chairs, rubbing his eyes. He didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to Rose. He didn’t get to say anything that he truly wanted to say. The hologram was strictly a way of making sure she was alright. He burned up a sun, all to make sure that she was better off than he was. She deserved it.

He stared at the TARDIS ceiling, a ceiling that went on for miles and miles, and almost seemed endless. Who was he to share his adventures with now? He wasn’t stupid -- he knew Rose would leave eventually. She’d find a nice bloke that made fish and chips and working in the shops seem palpable again, and she’d leave. They always left. But to have her, and then to lose her within a blink of an eye was too much.

For the first time since the Time War, since he blew up Gallifrey, he felt anger. This wasn’t anger that he could push down and pretend it wasn’t happening like most of the time. He truly felt anger. He hated the daleks more than he had ever hated anyone. The Cybermen weren’t close behind.

He hated the daleks because they were the reason that he had to blow up his home planet. Blow up his family, leaving him alone. Blow up his friends, with no one to travel with. Blow up all those children with a life ahead of them that would never be lived. He never thought about that time, kept that regeneration hidden in a box in his head while all the other faces jumbled about.

If the daleks hadn’t come and destroyed his home planet to the point where he needed to finish the job, he would be able to see Rose still. He’d be able to pop between parallel universes, find Rose, take her back to her home -- hell, to his home -- in time for tea. They could find a way to produce an immortality serum. on her and they could be together forever.

Fuck the daleks. They ruined everything. Fuck the Cybermen. They took her from him.

It was all too much, and he started to pace, his 903 year old mind racing with thoughts of anger, sadness, and regret. He started to tear everything he could down. Take the pillows off the console couches, tear down the coat hanger, and started to kick every part of the console he could. He banged on the walls, on the actual console. The TARDIS must have figured out that he was angry because she shut down, allowing him to cause harm, because that’s what he needed. He needed to break something that would always be there for him, because no one ever was there forever. Everyone always left. Everyone except her.

The generators came on and he had never heard her so quiet. She produced a piece of chalk.

“What the _hell_ am I supposed to do with chalk?” he yelled. “My children are gone! Any trace of them died with them!” He remembered wrapping his arms around his wife, watching his children play in the backyard on a day of rest. Those were his favorite days. Everything seemed as perfect as it could get. Nothing would ever go wrong. They would stay like that for hundreds of years. He closed his eyes as tears ran down his cheeks, remembering drawings that he had collected. That all parents had collected. His parents, and their parents before them. The only people that would never have the joy of collecting their child’s art in a statis cube would be his children, and the children of Gallifrey that day.

That’s what he had to do. He had spent time running. He needed to take responsibility for what he had done. With his hands shaking, he walked over to empty wall of the TARDIS and started to make tally marks. One mark for each of the children lost that day, starting with his own. Each of the children who lost their futures of being a Time Lord, having a family, their last moment drowned out by the screams of their parents and of the daleks.

Aimlessly, he continued to tally, he didn’t know how long it took him. If it took him a night, a week, a month, a year. He had no aspect of time as he repented for the sin he had committed against his family, friends, and home planet.

When he was done, he let out a scream that could have made anyone cry. A scream of anguish. A scream of regret. A scream for everything that never was that should have been.

He fell to his knees, sobbing. The chalk was now a nub, and all around him were tally marks, totaling 2.87 billion of children that day. He was so engulfed in his misery and depression he didn’t notice the TARDIS producing a amnesia gas, which caused him to fall forward, passed out, the chalk rolling out of his hand.

**\--**

When he awoke, who knows how many Earth or Gallifreyan days later, the tallies were gone, and everything was put back to where it was supposed to be. He looked around, wondering how he had gotten there.

He still remembered Rose. He still remembered the war on Earth which caused him to lose her. But that night, the night which would forever be known as his darkest night, was gone from his memory.

He stumbled to the console and decided to make sure Earth was okay. Humans. They always needed him.

 


End file.
